Congress
Washington Examiner: Lawmakers launch bipartisan effort to break FEC stalemate
By Nicole Duran
A dozen House members from both parties have introduced legislation to restructure the Federal Election Commission to help break deadlocks over campaign finance law enforcement.
The Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act would make the FEC’s structure similar to other independent federal agencies to “help ensure there is a cop on the beat of our nation’s campaign finance system,” the lawmakers stated.
The six-member commission that enforces campaign laws would drop to five and its members would be term-limited. The president would still appoint the chairman, whose term would become 10 years. Only two of the five members could be of the same political party, thereby ensuring at least one independent would be on the commission at any given time.
It also would create an advisory panel to recommend nominees to the president to fill any commission vacancies, ending the practice of commissioners serving indefinitely until a replacement is chosen and approved by the Senate.
Disclosure
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Should the feds ‘unmask’ anonymous political speech?
By A. Barton Hinkle
Dark-money expenditures have increased in recent years, but they still represent only a tiny fraction of total campaign spending. The vast majority of the money – more than 90 percent – gets spent by candidates, political parties, and groups formed to support specific candidates.
Nevertheless, “dark money” sounds despicable. It summons images of robber barons twirling their mustaches as they plot world domination – even though it is just as likely to be spent by NARAL Pro-Choice America or the Environmental Defense Action Fund.
Because it sounds awful, it has elicited calls for “disclosure.” Legislation has been introduced in Congress and in more than half the states that would require such incorporated nonprofits to disclose their donors…
Twitter is a for-profit corporation that recently published criticism of a politician by the name of Donald Trump. Let’s hope those who were horrified by the administration’s demand that the user be unmasked think long and hard about whether they want the government unmasking other critics, too.
Bloomberg BNA: Van Hollen Campaign Fined $2,100 by FEC for Mailing
By Kenneth P. Doyle
The campaign of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has agreed to pay a $2,100 fine to the Federal Election Commission for violating rules regarding use of FEC disclosure reports to solicit contributions.
The Van Hollen campaign acknowledged in a conciliation agreement with the FEC that the campaign had mailed a letter to a list of contributor names taken from an FEC report filed by the EMILY’s List political action committee.
Van Hollen, then a U.S. House member, prevailed in a contested Senate primary last year over former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.). EMILY’s list backed Edwards in the primary race…
Federal campaign finance law prohibits using information in FEC disclosure reports to solicit contributions. However, prior FEC rulings have allowed a campaign to use names from FEC reports filed by a political committee for mailings that correct inaccurate information disseminated by that committee, according to a report from the FEC general counsel’s office.
Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: A ‘Free Speech Area’ in Los Angeles
By James Freeman
Kevin Shaw is the president of a Young Americans for Liberty chapter at L.A.’s Pierce College. According to a lawsuit he filed on March 28 against officials of the school and the Los Angeles Community College District, he was distributing Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus last November when a college employee forced him to stop and also ordered him not to discuss his political views with other students. According to Mr. Shaw’s filing, he was then escorted to a campus office and “forced to complete a permit application” to use the college’s “Free Speech Area.”
Mr. Shaw’s complaint describes this area as “confined by painted lines, on the side of a campus thoroughfare. The area measures approximately 616 square feet, comprising approximately .003% of the total area of Pierce College’s 426-acre campus.” So the school is explicitly exercising speech control over 99.997% of its territory, a feat that would make Vladimir Putin jealous. Someone will need to remind us again what the purpose of a college is.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Senate Democrats are making bank off President Trump right now
By Amber Phillips
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) announced Tuesday that he raised an eye-popping $3 million from January through March. That’s, like, unheard of for a candidate to raise in non-election year, especially a candidate not expected to face a competitive general election. (Hillary Clinton won Connecticut in November by 15 points.) Murphy’s campaign says 97 percent of those contributions were $100 or less, a decent indicator that most of the money came from small donors rather than large, outside groups…
These fundraising numbers are huge for any candidate to post at this time, when few people are usually paying attention to politics, much less writing a check for a campaign that’s not for another year and a half. They’re especially politically resonant at this moment. Senate Democrats’ big numbers fit into a larger story we’ve been watching unfold since Trump was elected: Democrats’ base is fired up and active, and they are manifesting themselves in some unexpected ways.
Wall Street Journal: Newly Energized Liberals Pour Record Effort Into Local Races
By Janet Hook
Much of the grass-roots energy is being channeled not by Democratic leaders but by virtual political organizers who have proliferated online in the wake of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s loss to Mr. Trump last year. Liberal advocacy sites like The Daily Kos and Moveon.org are breaking political fundraising and participation records.
ActBlue, an online fundraising conduit for Democratic campaigns, handled 4 million donations totaling $111 million in the first quarter of 2017-more than four times as much as in that period in 2015…
The wave of grass-roots liberal activism on the left is reminiscent of the emergence of the tea party in 2009, a conservative populist movement that arose to challenge the Democratic policies of former President Barack Obama’s administration as well as the GOP establishment. A key question for the Democratic Party now is whether newly energized liberal activists will work with the party establishment, push it hard to the left or challenge it in future primary elections.
Washington Post: Montana Democrat announces $1.3 million haul through crowdfunding for special House election
By David Weigel
Rob Quist, a folk singer and Bernie Sanders supporter running for Montana’s open House seat, announced Tuesday that he’d raised $1.3 million so far for his race – the latest example of liberal donors crowdfunding in the hopes of creating an upset.
According to Quist’s FEC filings, promoted to reporters by the campaign, the Democrat raised close to $1 million in March alone, made up of 22,333 individual contributions. The average donation was $40, boosted after Sanders’s group Our Revolution and the Daily Kos blog endorsed Quist.
“Rob wants Montanans to know who is funding his grass-roots campaign, and that’s why we’re releasing our FEC report ahead of the deadline,” Quist said spokeswoman Tina Olechowski. “We’re calling on Greg Gianforte to join us by releasing his donors to the public.”
The States
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: ‘Dark money’ focus of finance measures
By Charles Ashby
Republicans in the Colorado House questioned the need for two political campaign reform measures that Democrats were pushing Tuesday.
One, HB1261, would require any individual or organization that is engaged in electioneering to indicate payment information on any campaign materials they mail out, such as a campaign flier.
The other measure, HB1262, would expand the number of times campaigns would be required to file campaign finance reports with the Secretary of State’s Office…
Under current law, those biweekly reports are only required within 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election…
Rep. Tim Leonard, R-Evergreen, said that measure doesn’t help the public learn anything about their elections.
“This is not for the general public,” he said. “This is for the political wonks that want to know who’s spending what money where, on what groups, so that (they) can counter back with the amount of money that (they’re) watching being spent.”
The bills, which won preliminary approval in the House, need a final vote there before heading to the Senate.
Bend Bulletin: Don’t adopt public financing of state campaigns
By Editorial Board
In a publicly financed election system of this sort, the underlying assumption is that there are good donors and bad donors. Good donors are the small donors. They are presumed to be ordinary people sending small checks. Bad donors are people or organizations that give more. That could mean people that contribute more, political organizations and interest groups.
Is it really true, though, that small donors are somehow more legitimate than big donors? Is there something inherently evil about people who believe in the same issue or group of issues joining together to try to influence politics? Is the Oregon League of Conservation Voters PAC bad because it sometimes writes big checks? Is the Oregon Business PAC? Or is it just that some people don’t like that some organizations write bigger checks than others?…
This bill also has no funding mechanism. So in a state that is already struggling to fill a shortfall of more than $1 billion, taxpayers can know that their money may help a candidate that they completely disagree with get elected.
Jackson Clarion-Ledger: Bryant signs campaign finance reform into law
By Geoff Pender
Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a campaign-finance reform measure that would restrict politicians using campaign money for personal expenses…
The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, prohibits personal use of campaign money, and defines personal use as any “other than expenditures relating to gaining, holding or performing functions of public office.”…
The final bill was a compromise between Senate and House proposals over the last two legislative sessions. It contains a mix of the Senate’s tougher restrictions on spending and what constitutes personal use, and the House’s stronger enforcement, to be overseen by the Ethics Commission. Campaign donations through Jan. 1 will be exempt from the new law.
New York Times: On Ethics, Cuomo Budget Entered Like a Lion and Emerged Like a Lamb
By Lisa W. Foderaro
A number of proposals could have been enacted without changing the Constitution. Among other things, they included creating a voluntary public campaign-finance system, lowering the limits on campaign contributions, and closing a loophole for limited liability companies…
But some lawmakers, including Senator Daniel L. Squadron, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, said the Republican majority in the Senate benefited too greatly from the so-called L.L.C. loophole to take meaningful action on ethics…
“If you own six L.L.C.s, you can give $100,000 to one Senate candidate, and there is no disclosure of who the underlying funder is,” Senator Squadron said. “Certainly, closing the loophole is something the Senate is allergic to.
“When you look at the core of what ails Albany, the outsize influence of a small number of heavily invested interests drives the agenda.”
Asked to respond, Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, accused Mr. Squadron of “playing politics,” arguing that he and his Democratic colleagues gained from “virtually unlimited contributions” from labor unions.
Vermont Digger: Donovan and Condos: Special Interest Money Could Flood Local Elections
By Jim Therrien
Vermont’s attorney general and secretary of state are seeking comment on campaign financing issues at one of a half-dozen public sessions planned around the state.
The officials and members of the Joint Committee on Campaign Finance Education, Compliance and Reform said Tuesday they will make recommendations to the Legislature on reforms to campaign financing laws.
The challenge is to propose legislation that is constitutional in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that paved the way for unlimited spending by out-of-state political action committees.
“Because of Citizens United, we are not immune to big money from out of state,” Attorney General TJ Donovan said. “I don’t know what we can do about Citizens United, but we can do something about transparency.”…
Both Donovan and committee member Natalie Silver, executive assistant to the AG, said that in most cases, “nobody likes raising money,” and many candidates might embrace public financing if the system were fair and practical.
